Thursday, August 25, 2016

My next
book—the one after Redemption—is historical
fiction. Not historical fantasy like Aurelia and Robert’s series. But genuine
HF.

This means
the research has to be more real. (In other words, I can’t cheat).

Don’t get
me wrong. I do a lot of research for Aurelia and Robert’s novels. And it’s a
blast. Scimitars. Loading rifles. Battle plans. Eighteenth century furniture,
torture devices, high-heeled shoes. I get to use all kinds of crazy historical
details within Aurelia and Robert’s books.

But for my
upcoming novel, I knew I needed to kick the research level into a whole other
gear.

This meant
a LOT of reading. Starting off with some general topics: the Oregon Trail,
pioneer women, school teaching in the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes
in Eastern Oregon, homesteading. I got to read some fiction and some great
non-fiction. I also got to read some really lousy non-fiction. And some stuff
written by people who definitely don’t know how to write. At least not at a
professional level.

But some
of that lousy stuff—it was the best. Because it was the most specific to the
locale and the era I was researching, southern Gilliam County in the Columbia Basin
at the turn of the century. And it’s great to know that’s all you can get
because it means there’s definitely room for a novel in this setting. I mean,
that’s one of the reasons I want to write about it. Because no one else has.

So, as I
was saying, that was a lot of reading.

Most of
which . . . won’t get into my book.

Because I had to pick a specific date, or series of dates:
September 1904-1905. Ding, ding, ding!

My major
achievement after a month of reading.

Once I had
done that, I could actually write the
whole first draft of the book.